Let common sense and truth guide you in life.

Gender Typing Emotions, Words, and Inanimate Objects

I’m an emotional person. My mom likes to make fun of me and my propensity of wearing my heart on my sleeve. Occasionally, she’s even called me weak.

Yet I choose not to listen to her opinion and that’s all it is: An opinion.

I’ve been in and out of counseling through my life. When I started, my high school made it mandatory that I go. Perhaps it was noted in my student files that I was bullied in middle school and had a few issues because of it.

It doesn’t matter why or what was written in my files to instigate the counseling sessions. I’m just happy they did it.

Adults are complex in their feelings, children even more. With adults, they’ve lived long enough to understand, at least, the basics of their emotions. They don’t do anything about their emotions because they’re mostly stubborn when it comes to change. A few people come to mind as I think about it now.

Children have no idea that their problem doesn’t stem from one specific emotion. They’re a cauldron of mixing, steaming emotions. When they’re teens, they’re powder kegs of volcanic emotions. It doesn’t have to be this way.

If they were allowed to readily express their emotions, talk about them, and grasp a better understanding of what they’re feeling and why they’re feeling that way, it would help their development. They would become better well-adjusted adults.

In my journey of emotional discovery, I’ve noticed I’m a chronic cryer. I cry when I’m happy, sad, and angry. When I read or watch anything remotely heartwarming, I cry. Sad moments in books and movies will make me cry buckets. I purposely stay away from tearjerkers because I know I’m going to cry an ocean.

Stories in the news regarding animals are especially tear inducing. They remind me there are great people in the world who go into garbage dumps to rescue an emaciated dog covered in mange, sores, and insects. Then they take them to the vet, clean them up, and nurse them back to health.

Those stories also remind me that people suck. Just today I read a news story about an injured otter in Norway that was out of it’s mind with pain wandered into a restaurant and terrorized the customers or went on a rampage.

That otter didn’t terrorize anyone. It was in pain and in protection mode. The otter was cut up from a propeller and breathing heavy.

Wildlife officials were called to the scene, and officer Hakan Sunde was bitten on the finger by the marine mammal…

Sadly, the otter’s injuries were so severe that it had to be euthanized. Rest in peace, little otter.

All that crying I do when it comes to animal stories, movies, and anything else labels me as weak.

An emotion or act isn’t weak or strong. It’s something we do. It’s who we are. Male, female, young, or old either cries or has the capacity to cry.

Crying is considered weak because humans label it as such. People give a natural inclination a negative connotation. There are many things in this world that’s just a feeling, a word, or a thing. Yet, they’re labeled in an attempt to make them something they’re not.

The color pink is what we call a colorful visual representation we find in nature. Pink is made by mixing the colors red and white. The color is named after a flower.

Yet, people label it as feminine or a color only women should possess in any capacity. The color is not male or female, it’s simply considered feminine because people label it as such, making it way more than just a color.

People give things masculine and feminine connotations.

A boy in South Carolina chose a My Little Pony lunchbox for school. He likes the cartoon show and it’s message of friendship.

In my opinion, his parents are doing a fabulous job of encouraging this positive influence by allowing him to express his preference in television shows with a lunchbox.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it this way especially impressionable children with a gender label obsession substantiated by their parents and school officials. The poor boy was being bullied by his classmates for having the lunchbox. Furthermore, it wasn’t only verbal abuse. These kids physically abused him.

The school’s response? They instructed [him] to start bringing his lunch in something else because school officials believe the bag — not the bullying — is the real problem.

The school responds by blaming the victim. He invited his classmates to bully him by bringing a My Little Pony lunchbox that’s so obviously a girl’s lunchbox.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? The mother thought so.

Grayson’s mom, Noreen, is also defending her son, calling the school out for excusing bullying rather than taking action against it. “Saying a lunchbox is a trigger for bullying is like saying a short skirt is a trigger for rape. It’s flawed logic; it doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

Perhaps, the way to tackle the world’s rape epidemic is to first tackle gender typing.

Why must things be male or female? We are people, we are equal. That boy should be able to bring his lunchbox to school and not be harassed. I admire him for his strength. I sincerely hope this moment will not set him back in freely expressing himself and I hope that he grows into a wonderful adult.